Do you have an event, festival, contribution opportunity or other activity with a relationship to Asian Australian arts and culture? Just email us your information with a link to the relevant details and we will do our best to share with our readers.
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September 2017
Hawa (Hatch Theatrics) – Singapore – Australian Premiere
Siti, a recent convert to Islam, is suddenly tasked with overseeing the funeral arrangements of her close friend and companion. While preparations are being made for the last rites a charming stranger arrives unexpectedly. Even as Siti grieves, she has to contend with the societal forces that threaten to deny her of her own existence. Performed in English and Malay with English surtitles. Purchase tickets at brisbanefestival.com.au Dates: Wed 27 – Fri 29 Sept @ 7PM & Sat 30 Sept @ 3PM Cost: Adult - $29 Concession - $19.90 Venue: Theatre Republic - The Loft The Loft (Building Z2), QUT Creative Industries Musk Avenue KELVIN GROVE QLD 4059
Find out more »Under Siege (Yang Liping Contemporary Dance) (China)
Dates: Wed 27- Fri 29 Sept @ 7:30PM Thu 28 Sept @ 9:20PM (post show Q&A) A climatic battle between the Chu and Han armies – an encounter that changed the course of Chinese history. A love story between a besieged warlord Xiang Yu and his self-sacrificing concubine that would transcend death. Ambition. Loyalty. Treachery. The might of empires. The power of sacrifice. Purchase tickets at brisbanefestival.com.au Sat 30 Sept @ 8PM Cost: Premium Adult $65 A-Reserve Adult $55 Concession $49 Groups 6 to 10 $49 B-Reserve Adult $49 Concession $45 Venue: QPAC - Playhouse Corner Grey and Melbourne Streets Queensland Performing Arts Centre SOUTH BANK QLD 4101
Find out more »Sultan of The Disco (South Korea)
Inspired by soul/funk music from the Golden Age represented by Chic, Jackson 5 and Kool and the Gang, this Kooky five-piece Korean disco band delivers a vintage sound to modern listeners. Cool costumes, cheeky lyrics and unique group dancing will get the crowd grooving along!! Purchase tickets at brisbanefestival.com.au Venue: The Tivoli 52 Costin Street FORTITUDE VALLEY QLD 4006 Date: Sat 20 September @8PM Cost: Adult - $40 Concession - $35 At the door - $45
Find out more »October 2017
Tetsuya Umeda
Japan’s master artist of sonic visual sensations, Tetsuya Umeda is set to thrill with his site specific occupation of The SUBSTATION from 30 October to 4 November and a one off performance on Friday 3 November, guiding audiences to a dynamic experimental path. Umeda creates dynamic environments with architectural structures, sound and light. His mesmerising and surprising performances produce intricate soundscapes and musical compositions through live experiments with everyday tools and scraps, re-purposed machines and electronics. Umeda’s site-specific installation employs found domestic objects, transformed from their daily familiarity into a transcendent spectacle of the unexpected. Umeda’s work demonstrates elaborate systems of cause-and-effect, with elements powered by gravity, wind, centrifugal force or falling objects, capturing the moments where ordinary and extraordinary collide. His richly dynamic and embodied installations are often situated outside of the gallery context. The transparent process taking place before the audience’s eyes, exposes viewers as both witnesses and collaborators as they engage with his interactive performance pieces. …
Find out more »November 2017
Decolonising Gender and Contending with Legal Systems
The cis-sexist and white supremacist textures of colonisation has created and supported a gender binary system that has led to the discrimination and systemic oppression of trans, gender diverse and two-spirit people. How do we push back? What are the tools and frameworks we need right now? How might trans politics use legal systems as a tactic for survival and dismantling structural violence whilst ensuring that our transformative demands are not watered down? Join us as Philip Marrii shares a First Nations perspective on gender diverse identities. Then Matilda Alexander & Sujay Kentlyn will discuss new anti-discrimination laws that have significant implications for the rights of trans and gender non-binary people. These 3 speakers will share first, then there will be time for Q&A and discussion. People of all genders and allies are invited. Please share with your trans, gender non binary and ally friends. We can all be better…
Find out more »URBAN LAYAS presents The Colour of Desire
Bold, Rebellious and Stereotype busting! Seven female voices performing a repertoire of songs that will shatter your understanding of Indian classical music forever! .............................................. THE COLOUR OF DESIRE presented by URBAN LAYAS is a two hour exploration of female desire in South Asian music and poetry, through a unique combination of vocal, instrumental and dance performances by some of Melbourne's emerging artists. From fun and frivolous to deeply romantic and even tortured, The Colour of Desire reclaims female sexuality in all its hues, puts it back in the bodies and voices of real women, and engages with the question of the gap between the sexually liberated female voice in music and contemporary representations in everyday life. “Our aim is to use poetry and performance to engage audiences in a powerful and long overdue conversation about gender equality and cultural sexual repression, and, in particular, give agency to women of South…
Find out more »Romeo Is Not The Only Fruit
Romeo Is Not The Only Fruit – Jean Tong World premiere 14 – 26 November 2017 There’s something so enticing about forbidden fruit A musical romp better than the best mod-rom-com, Romeo Is Not The Only Fruit takes the star-crossed lovers audiences know and love, and makes them better as starcrossed lesbians. Featuring a Dead Lesbian chorus and some pretty gay songs, Romeo Is Not The Only Fruit is fun, campy, politically irreverent and casually incisive. Writer, director and lyricist Jean Tong explains that the creative team are young, queer and want to party while opening up pathways into shifting the state of representation as it currently stands, “It’s 2017 and the world is still telling the same, tired old story about queer people of colour and our access to spaces.” “Whether on the news or on Netflix, we’re still watching ourselves die for someone else’s happiness, someone else’s comfort. Romeo Is Not The Only Fruit is…
Find out more »We’re Queer Here
Rainbow Alert! Presented by Peril Magazine and the City of Melbourne as a part of Digital Diasporas - we are delighted to invite you to a night of queer art and performance. All year we've been working hard to support queer artists from diverse cultural backgrounds to make and share new work as a part of our rolling edition, We're Queer Here. And now we're ready to share it with you live and IRL. Join us at Art Play on Transgender Remembrance Day for a night of art, performance, perspectives, solidarity and community that celebrates the diversity of the LGBTIQ communities of colour across Melbourne. Interrogating place, home, identity, belonging, culture, race and sexuality, We're Queer Here puts the queer human, body and thinking at the foreground of a night of art, collusion, creativity and community. While content will contain adult themes and discussion (we will provide guidance for self-curating…
Find out more »December 2017
KAIJU HIP HOP JAZZ PROJECT
Kojoe X Aaron Choulai explore the boundaries of hip hop and jazz in a new collaboration with an impressive line-up of Melbourne musicians on the cutting edge of the local underground and mainstream music scene. Celebrated jazz pianist and beat maker Aaron Choulai, who grew up in Australia, made Tokyo his home in 2008. It was there that one of his most exciting collaborations came together when he crossed paths with Kojoe. Koichiro “Kojoe” Sakata is a Japan born, Queens NYC bred artist who bears lyrical fluency in both Japanese and English. Performing Hip Hop that authentically reflects his life story, Japanese heritage and Black culture experiences is what drives the artistic expression and cultural connection Kojoe aims to make through his music. Together, these fresh and innovative artists refuse to stop changing the sound of contemporary hip hop by incorporating elements of jazz and experimental beats. Doors Open 02…
Find out more »Audiocraft Presents: It’s Not A Race
It’s been a big year for ABC RN podcast It’s Not A Race and they’re throwing a party to celebrate! Beverley Wang and a panel of special guests are taping the season two finale in front of a live audience in Melbourne, and you should be there! Paola Balla, Santilla Chingaipe and Benjamin Law will be on stage for the diversity panel to ~end~ all diversity panels. What are the conversations they’re ~dying~ to have, rather than the conversations they’re ~expected~ to have? Also featuring a musical performance by Yeo. It’s Not A Race is the podcast Australia needs right now, featuring stories and conversations about everything race related here and beyond. Subscribe here or find it on the ABC listen app. DETAILS Doors open 6.30pm for 7.30pm start Drinks available for purchase at the bar Tickets are $15. Book online: http://bit.ly/2zKlxHh | $20 on the door (subject to availability)
Find out more »Always There And All A Part | Emerging Curator Mentorship
Always there and all a part presents works that interrogate the complexities of navigating race in the arts. Whiteness is at the foundation of the sector, and the exhibition plays with the tension between diversity and inclusion discourse and the institutional Whiteness that frames the practices and bodies of non-White artists. Spanning both gallery spaces of BLINDSIDE, Always there and all a part unpacks what it means to make work for a White artistic community that is invested in creating an aesthetics of inclusion, while simultaneously only extending conditional invitations to diverse artists from within White spaces. The exhibition troubles these aesthetics and power dynamics at their borders and boundaries, across photography, performance, printmaking, video and installation. Curator | Andy Butler Curatorial mentor | Emily Cormack Nathan Beard, Lara Chamas, Caroline Garcia, Steven Rhall, Hari Sivanesan, Priya Srinivasan, TextaQueen Opening night includes performance by Priya Srinivasan + Hari Sivanesan With…
Find out more »NIDAnights: Resonant Lines
Resonant Lines (as part of Mapping Melbourne 2017) Presented by NIDA with Multicultural Arts Victoria Inc. Triple-bill presents an eclectic collection of aural, visual and poetic explorations of ritual as drawn from the intersecting vectors of identity and connection of the artists. The meanings are often metaphoric and reference the spontaneous transformation of experience. The evening curated as part of Mapping Melbourne will culminate in a six-way improvisation between the artists based on energy exchanges and instinctual flows. Allocations are now exhausted for this edition of NIDAnights! NIDAnights are strictly a ticketed event, see our upcoming schedule of events at nida.edu.au/nidanights About Multicultural Arts Victoria: Multicultural Arts Victoria (MAV) is Victoria's peak arts organisation promoting cultural diversity in the arts. MAV is a not for profit organisation and proudly represents artists and communities from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. MAV is a highly regarded organisation with a reputation for delivering…
Find out more »Edition Two Submissions
The Next Edition Theme by The Art of Oral Storytelling Journal The Art of Oral Storytelling Journal presents their next edition theme: A Storyteller's Toolbox. Open for submissions based on this theme until Dec 31, 2017. They will be kicking off the new year with the release of the next edition the late Jan. Submissions The AOSJ is looking for submissions of creative non-fiction that is connected to the theme. All successful submissions also require a photo and a short biography. Please view their website for submission guidelines at [email protected] All submissions are to be emailed to [email protected]
Find out more »January 2018
Howie Lee with Corin, Nico Niquo, Jale and Wa?ste
HOWIE LEE makes his Australian debut with his newly created live A/V set. Playing at Howler on the 12th of January, as a side show to his MOFO and Sydney Festival dates, with supports by CORIN, NICO NIQUO, WA?STE and JALE. Howie’s sound has been described as the future music of cyberpunk Beijing, his tracks contain clattering percussion, skittering rhythms and the sound of traditional China, dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age. With a uniquely “Made in China” aesthetic, Howie is an electronic music visionary – creating a hybrid club sound rooted in the Middle Kingdom, but built for our interconnected globe. His Sinofuturism set will include visual from Veeeky and Thoiid, with a specially built RPG computer game being played and mixed into visuals. More at Howie Lee with Corin, Nico Niquo, Jale and Wa?ste
Find out more »Women on Country: Indigenous Sovereignty and Feminist Identity
Cordite Publishing Inc. Event Date: 24 January 2018 Author / Presenters: Jeanine Leane, Anne Elvey, Timmah Ball, Bonny Cassidy Event link: https://www.facebook.com/events/910110822486413/ Re: Double book launch by Cordite Books in partnership with Australian Poetry. Free event, and with wine. Please attend the launching of and readings from Jeanine Leane's Walk Back Over and Anne Elvey's White on White – both published by Cordite Books – at the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas on Wednesday, 24 January 2018. 6-7.30pm. Although written independently, they will print and launch together as the last of our Series 2 books. These are not new or emerging voices, they represent seasoned, contemporary, feminist literature. Elvey's interrogation of her European heritage in post-colonial Australia and Leane's unflappable Indigenous identity both explore our past archive and demand much from our future. These are two of the most culturally significant books that will be published for 2018. Fact, not hyperbole. Timmah Ball will…
Find out more »Bent Bollywood
Karma Dance makes its 2018 Midumma Festival debut with their original production, Bent Bollywood, an eclectic and libidinous dance show that combines the technical rigour of classical Indian dance with the camp theatrics of Bollywood. Featuring Karma Dance Co-Artistic Directors, Govind Pillai and Raina Peterson, Bent Bollywood showcases everything that is both weird and wonderful about queer performance art. Witness the treacherous imagination of the diaspora, the postcolonial rage of the subaltern, and the exuberant lust of the queers who would have written a much better “Kama Sutra” if only they'd been asked. Govind Pillai is one of only a few professional male practioners of Bharatanatyam, a genre of Indian classical dance expressing Hindu religious ideas and spritual themes traditionally performed only by women. Raina Peterson is a professional Australian practioner of Mohiniyattam, an Indian dance style that evokes a mythical enchantress of the Hindu god Vishnu who helps good…
Find out more »February 2018
Arouze Presents 我们 (Wo Men) w Rainbow Chan, May Lyn, and More
In anticipation for the arrival of the Lunar New Year (15/02), we've put together this event to celebrate the upcoming festivities. For those of you who are already pining for a redo of 2018, fret not, as the New Year only begins officially in Feb according to the Chinese calendar. To top things off, we'll be celebrating 1 year since Arouze has been formed. All of this wouldn't have been possible without our very first signee, May Lyn which why we'll be bringing our Brissie home gal down for this party. As this is our inaugural event, we're doing things a little differently. We've curated an incredibly personal event which features a selective group of artists which have inspired us on our musical journey. ...'我们' pronounced phonetically as 'Wo Men' means 'Us' in Mandarin. In line with the theme for this event, we feel very honoured and privileged to be…
Find out more »April 2018
To Arrive Upside Down: Exhibition
'To Arrive Upside Down' is a solo exhibition by the artist Lorilee Yang, and examines her relationship to her Asian-Australian identity. The works in this show largely depart from Chinese mythology and symbolism ,alongside of Western illustration and art history.
Find out more »May 2018
Electric Butterflies: Comedy
Hirarious* storyteller and cornball romantic Kuah Jenhan brings you an age-old story: Boy meets girl. Girl leaves boy. Boy flies to Uzbekistan. Boy writes a rom-(stand-up)-com. Specifically, it’s the story of a once-fresh faced 20-year-old Jenhan who encounters a Central Asian beauty queen, almost finding love amidst apartments in Kuala Lumpur and black markets in Tashkent, with Powerpoint playing cupid. One of Malaysia’s brightest comedy talents, Kuah Jenhan is a regular feature on local radio, TV and film. In the last 12 months he has been featured on Comedy Central Asia, and has opened for comedy legend Eddie Izzard. 'Be prepared to LOL with abandon, and perhaps more unusually, fight the very real urge to rise from your seat to give the guy a big bear hug.' The Music 'Jenhan is quite the engaging story-teller... you’ll leave with a soft spot for this modestly-spoken comedian.' Chortle (UK) 'Jenhan combines family history, identity,…
Find out more »Next Wave Festival: Bloodlines by Sancintya Simpson
Along with culture and tradition, memories and trauma are also passed down to the next generation, shaping who we are. A story told through a narrative of Indian miniature paintings with sound, video and prose, Bloodlines addresses the unacknowledged history and experiences of women taken from South India to South Africa as indentured labour during the late 1800’s and throughout the early 1900’s. Tricked onto vessels, and often raped and abused on board before being mistreated on the sugar cane plantations they were sent to, these women buried their stories beneath years of shame, intergenerational trauma, and loss of culture. Simpson journeys with her mother to search for historical information through disappearing oral histories, from their own matrilineal heritage. By sharing these harrowing experiences, Simpson affords them a rightful place in history. Access • A multi-site audio described tour for people who are Blind or have low vision will take place on…
Find out more »Theatre: Hungry Ghosts by Jean Tong
Hungry Ghosts is a new Australian work by Jean Tong starring Emina Ashman, Jing-Xuan Chan and Bernard Sam that offers an unconventional take on contemporary life as it criss-crosses between the fate of flight MH370, Malaysia’s billion-dollar 1MDB scandal, and explorations of identity. Filled with humour, vivid imagery and rebellious energy, Hungry Ghosts promises to be a haunting theatrical experience when it premieres at Southbank Theatre, The Lawler on Saturday 5 May under the direction of Petra Kalive (Melbourne Talam). Tickets available here.
Find out more »Please note: Peril provides these details as a courtesy, but we’re not in charge of the events, so please don’t harrass us if the Facebook page is down for a particular event – unless we make that really really clear, in which case you’ll know because we’ll probably be hounding to you come along.